A commuter has been caught on camera defending a fellow passenger from a hateful tirade on a train in Sydney, Australia.
In the shocking video, an elderly woman is seen asking a Muslim woman: “Why are you wearing it [a head scarf] for a man who married a six-year-old girl?”
Shocked, Stacy Eden jumped to the woman’s defense.
In the clip, Eden is heard telling the woman: “She wears it for herself, she wears it because she wants to be modest with her body okay? Not because of people like you who are going to sit there and disrespect her.”
The woman continues: “Read the newspapers, 148 Christians murdered in Kenya, they’re killing each other in Syria."
Eden responds: “That’s not her doing that, that’s a minority of people not a majority. Have some respect. What’s that got to do with her?”
The woman admits: “Nothing.”
Eden wraps up the argument with some well-need advice: “If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything.”
Posted by Stacey Eden on Monday, 5 January 2015
Stacey Eden confronted the woman on a train in Sydney
Speaking to Australia’s ABC News, the 23-year-old said that she saw the woman speaking to a passenger accompanied by her husband and a baby.
Eden explained: "The old lady actually bent over and touched the lady's scarf while she was talking. I didn't think anything of it."
She then realized that the woman was abusing the couple, who remained silent.
Eden said: "The lady next to me was saying things like 'all the people that were dying were because of the Muslims in the world and look what's happening overseas’.”
She said that the woman continued: "Read the newspapers, why are you following this religion for, why do you wear things like that so you can marry a man who's going to go marry a 6-year-old?"
"I was like, 'This isn't right, why are you saying these kinds of things?' She was picking on her for the way she was dressed and that's what really got to me.
"This lady that was sitting across from me wearing a scarf, she was minding her own business, she never said anything out of line, she never even spoke.
"That's why I decided to say something because it just made me really angry and upset."
Eden said she stayed on the train past her stop to ensure that the couple were able to get off the train without further harassment.
On her Facebook page she wrote:
I listened to this woman bad mouth muslims and call the lady sitting opposite me an ISIS supporter because she wore a scarf, then she told me to go join ISIS because i was sticking up for her.
People like this make me sick. People who are so ignorant and disrespectful to other people who were clearly sitting there minding their own business.
People need to stop judging and putting others down over religion! EVERY RELIGION HAS GOOD AND BAD but if you take it back to the foundations, every religion is also built on LOVE. To LOVE one another. The purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others.
Hafeez Ahmed Bhatti, the victim's husband, posted a message on Facebook and said: "This video was not made by me. That is what happened to us on a Sydney train, God bless Stacey Eden she supported us".
Eden has since become something of celebrity in Australia and her Facebook page has been inundated with well-wishers.
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